Today on Engineering Newswire, we’ve filming with autonomous drones, seeing through walls and skin with night-vision goggles, and testing Boeing’s High Energy Laser Mobile Demonstrator. This episode features:
Your Personal Aerial Photographer: The IRIS+ quadcopter drone from 3D Robotics is a personal drone that will automatically fly itself wherever you tell it to go, while simultaneously keeping a camera steady with two-axis gimbal stabilization. It also has the ability to fly manually with a remote controller.
The IRIS+ includes the Pixhawk autopilot system, a high-capacity flight battery, battery charger, ground station radio, and remote controller. So you can essentially buy your own personal aerial photographer for $750.
T-Ray Goggles: Research from the University of Maryland and could find applications in emerging terahertz fields such as mobile communications, medical imaging, chemical sensing, night vision, and security.
In order to detect these light waves, most detectors need to be kept at -452 degrees Fahrenheit, and existing detectors are bulky, slow and not cheap. To get around these challenges, the University of Maryland incorporated the special properties of graphene to increase the speed and maintain the sensitivity of room temperature wave detection in the terahertz range.
Boeing’s Laser Demonstrator: Boeing and the U.S. Army have successfully demonstrated the capabilities of the High Energy Laser Mobile Demonstrator (HEL MD) in maritime conditions
The HEL MD is the first mobile, high-energy laser, counter rocket, artillery and mortar platform to be built and demonstrated by the U.S. Army. The laser itself is idea for tactical missions because it is lightweight and compact, allowing it to be easily transported, and mounted on various platforms.
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Filed Under: M2M (machine to machine)